Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Ali Larter Cooks Up a Party in the Hollywood Hills

Does having acting chops necessarily mean you can make pork chops? The newest member of Hollywood's growing culinary-crossover clique has ELLE over for dinner to show the proof is in the bouillabaisse.

Martha, May I? ELLE has Dinner with Ali Larter

Martha, May I? ELLE has Dinner with Ali Larter

Ali Larter is no stranger to using dessert to advance her career. A few strategically placed squirts of Reddi-wip in the 1999 football flick Varsity Blues took the New Jersey native from relative unknown to in-demand starlet with roles in Heroes and Legally Blonde. But tonight, as she stands in her Hollywood Hills kitchen putting the finishing touches on a salted caramel plum tarte tatin, the 37-year-old insists résumé building is the farthest thing from her mind.

Okay, well, not farthest: The dish is from Kitchen Revelry, Larter’s how-to guide for the aspiring hostess, out this month from St. Martin’s Press. And its release is the reason she has gathered 10 friends—including Joshua Jackson (with whom she appeared in Dawson’s Creek) and actor James Marsden—for an alfresco feast in her impeccably manicured backyard. Still, “I’d be throwing a party anyway—book or no book,” says Larter, who lives with her husband of four years, Bachelorette actor Hayes MacArthur. “Our door’s always open—even if it’s friends coming over just to crack open some beers.”

Entertainers penning cookbooks isn’t exactly a new phenomenon (Liberace was offering fans a peek into delicacies from his “seven dining rooms” back in 1970), but after the wild success of the Gwyneth Paltrow–helmed Goop, it seems like every comely star in Hollywood is jumping on the domestic-goddess bandwagon. (Jessica Alba, Eva Longoria, and Sheryl Crow have all come out with lifestyle tomes recently; Cameron Diaz has one in the works for next year). While Larter, mother to son Teddy, almost three, admits Paltrow was an inspiration—“I saw that she was a working mother who did Goop and still continued to do films”—she insists her interest in the project was organic. “I sincerely wanted to share with people what I’ve learned about entertaining,” says Larter.